


The Flowchart

by forkflinger



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Comedy, Gen, Pre-Kingdom Hearts III, Written Pre-Kingdom Hearts III
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 22:15:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17010210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forkflinger/pseuds/forkflinger
Summary: Kairi gets everybody in the same room at the same time, for once, because it's time to figure out what's actually going on here. She's got a whiteboard, some markers, and as much time as she needs.Sora and Riku are helpful. Lea is not.





	The Flowchart

“Right. Let’s get started.” Kairi uncapped the marker and reached up as high as she could. “We need seven Seekers of Light. They’ve got thirteen Seekers of Darkness.” She wrote _Light_ and _Darkness_ on the whiteboard, with space in between.

They had gathered in Master Yen Sid’s tower. Sora and Riku sat next to each other on a couch; Lea perched on the back. Mickey sat in an armchair, staring intently at the board. Donald and Goofy sat between the chair and the couch in rickety wooden chairs pulled into the room for this occasion. In the background Yen Sid worked at his desk, ostensibly not listening in. And Kairi stood in front of a whiteboard holding several different colors of markers, ready to finally sort some things out.

“We’ve got Sora, Riku, King Mickey, Lea, and me.” She wrote the names in a list below _Light_. “Lea’s a maybe.”

“Rude,” Lea said.

“So we need two or three more.” Kairi drew a line down the middle of the board and moved to the other side. “And we’ve got three main groups of people to draw from.” She wrote several names in clusters and circled them before turning around to face her audience.

“First group,” she said, tapping on a circle. “The Keyblade wielders from ten years ago.” She paused for a second, considering, before writing _Keyblade Wielders_ under their names. “Your Majesty, status report on them.”

Mickey nodded. “Aqua has been stranded in the realms of darkness. I know she’s still there because I ran into her when I was helping Sora and Riku close the door to darkness.”

“And she was still Aqua?” Kairi asked, making notes on the board. “Not possessed or crazy?”

“No. She was still herself.”

“Good.” She noted _Heart + Body_ under _Aqua_. “Okay. Terra.”

Mickey shook his head sadly. “Terra’s body was taken over by Xehanort. His heart is trapped.”

“Heart… trapped,” Kairi repeated, jotting it down. “Body taken over. I think that makes him a Seeker of Darkness, unfortunately.” She reaches over and wrote _Terra_ on the other side of the line. “Okay, and Ventus.”

“Ventus is asleep. Aqua hid him before falling into the realm of darkness. We haven’t been able to find him.”

“Okay.” _Heart?_ and _Body?_ went under _Ventus_. Kairi stepped back and looked at the board. “So it sounds like Aqua is the one in the most immediate danger. If she’s in the realms of darkness but hasn’t cracked yet, maybe we can get to her before she does.” On the far right of the board, in a column labeled _Priorities_ , Kairi reached up and wrote _Aqua_. “On the other hand,” she said, moving to the bottom of the board, “Ventus is asleep and hidden and can probably stay that way for now. So he’s down here.”

“Isn’t Terra in worse shape than Aqua?” Riku chimed in. “He’s actively being used by Xehanort. Shouldn’t that bump him up the list?”

“A fair point. But if we act fast, we might be able to save Aqua _before_ she falls to darkness, and that’s kind of a novelty for us.” She wrote Terra’s name midway up the board, between the other two. “Also, we have no idea how to help Terra. ‘Get Aqua out of hell’ is a simpler goal. Aqua and Ventus both seem like good candidates to round out our seven.” _Aqua_ and _Ventus_ went under _Light_. “If we can get them.”

“Next,” she said, moving back to the groups of names, “is Sora’s little heart orphanage.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call it that,” Sora grumbled, crossing his arms.

“You wouldn’t let me call it Sora’s Slumber Party.”

“That’s because I don’t like that either!”

“Anyway, we’re basing this mostly on what Riku saw in Sora’s heart. You’re up, Riku. Status report.”

Riku cleared his throat and glanced at Sora. “Okay, uh. I saw Roxas.”

Kairi nodded. “Makes sense.”

“Then I saw Roxas again.”

“Which makes less sense.” Kairi shook her head. “You’re sure you didn’t just see him twice or something?”

“He was wearing different clothes. But he looked pretty much exactly the same.”

“Okay.” Kairi wrote down _Roxas_ , and under that, _Roxas 2?_ “What else?”

“There was a girl I didn’t recognize. She looked kinda like you, Kairi, but with dark hair.”

“I saw her too,” said Sora. “In my dream.”

“And we all have no idea who that is,” Kairi confirmed. She wrote _Kairi 2??_

“Ansem was there too. Not evil Ansem. Like, Ansem the Wise. But I’m not sure he was really there?”

“Care to expand on that?” Kairi asked, stopping halfway through _Ansem (the Wise)_.

Riku shrugged. “He talked to me. Told me he’d stored himself there as data. So it wasn’t his heart, just a data copy? I guess?”

Kairi sighed and shook her head. “Makes as much sense as anything else.” She drew a little box around _Ansem_ _(the Wise)_ and labeled it _data_. “So we’ve got Roxas and two other people rattling around in there.”

“I can feel Roxas sometimes,” Sora said, looking down at his chest, “but I don’t think I’ve noticed anyone else. How would I even know?”

“Try stabbing yourself with your Keyblade again,” said Riku. “See who pops out.” Sora hit him in the arm.

“I don’t like the mystery guests,” Kairi said, crossing back to the master list, “but everyone seems fine in there for now. So unless something about that changes, I think they’re going further down on the list. Sorry, Lea.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Lea answered, waving his hand. “As long as Roxas is safe in Sergeant Sora’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, I can be patient.”

Sora glared up at Lea as Kairi wiped away the half-written _Sora’s Little Hea_ and replaced it with _Sergeant Sora’s Lonely Hearts Club Band_. They sat between Terra and Ventus. “Roxas could potentially be one of our seven if we figure out how to get him out, but I’m worried about the others. Especially Ansem.” She wrote all four names between the two columns of Seekers and drew a little arrow pointing _Roxas_ at _Light_. “So he’s not a top pick.”

“Lastly,” Kairi said, looping back to the third group of names, “we’ve got the Nobodies. Now, technically Roxas is a Nobody, but he’s already in Sergeant Sora’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

“You can’t call it that!”

“There’s Naminé,” Kairi continued undeterred. “She’s somewhere in my heart. No immediate danger there.” She jotted _Naminé_ down below _Sergeant Sora’s Lonely Hearts Club Band_. “We’ll help her out when we help them. If she even wants to come out,” she added under her breath. “Then,” she said more loudly, “there’s the missing Organization members.”

“Larxene and Marluxia can stay gone,” Lea said. “But Demyx was a cool guy.”

Sora piped up. “I felt really bad about killing him.”

Kairi crossed her arms and nodded. “I think the bigger concern is whether they’ve been taken as vessels or not. They’re the most obvious candidates, and we know Xehanort’s already got a couple. So it would be a good idea to track down the others and keep an eye on them.”

“Does that really outrank Terra?” Riku asked as Kairi slid the marker up. “They’re probably fine. They don’t even need help.”

“It’s about damage control, Riku. Demyx might be tanning on the beach drinking a mai tai, and we’d want him to stay there instead of becoming one of Xehanort’s vessels.”

Riku grumbled, but sat back as Kairi wrote _Former Org. Members_ below Aqua’s name. She turned around and frowned. “Sora, are you okay?”

“Huh? Yeah. Why?” Kairi tapped on her cheek. Sora reached up and felt a wet tear on his cheek. “Dang it.”

“Aw, poor baby.” Lea reached forward and ruffled Sora’s hair. 

Sora swatted his arm and twisted around to glare at him. “You’re crying too!”

“What?” Lea touched his own face and his fingers came away wet. “Huh. That’s weird.”

Kairi crossed her arms. “Yeah. That _is_ weird, actually. Why are you crying?”

“How should I know?” Lea said, wiping his face on his sleeve. “I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“See how you like it,” Sora muttered.

“You’re not harboring anyone else’s heart?” Kairi asked.

Lea shrugged. “I’m barely harboring my own heart.”

Kairi stroked her chin. “So something made you and Sora cry, but you don’t know why. Hmm.” She turned around and drew two intersecting circles on the board. “Sora tends to cry when Roxas is sad about something, right?” Over one circle she wrote _Lea_ and over the other, in small letters, the entire phrase _Sergeant Sora’s Lonely Hearts Club Band_. “Somewhere in here,” she said, drawing a question mark in the oval where the circles crossed, “is something we don’t know about. Or someone.”

“Is that important?” asked Sora.

“Everything’s important.”

“It’s probably Roxas 2,” said Riku. “Right? If he looks like Roxas, they’ve gotta be connected.”

“I think I’d remember a second Roxas,” Lea answered. “So it’s probably Kairi 2. Kairi, go dye your hair black, see if that jogs my memory.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll get right on it.” She replaced the question mark with _R2?_ and _K2?_ “I wonder if they’re related to Aqua and Ventus somehow,” she muttered. “I feel like there’s a connection we’re missing between us and them.”

Lea sighed and lay down along the back of the couch. “You know, I knew a Ventus once,” he remarked.

Kairi froze with her hand in mid-air. “You what?”

“Yeah. Back before I got turned into a Nobody. Met him in Radiant Gardens. Nice kid.” He frowned. “He had, like, a dumb wooden Keyblade, I think?”

Kairi turned very slowly. “Is that so.”

“Mm-hmm.” Lea tapped his chin. “Now that I think of it, he kinda looked like Roxas.”

Kairi threw the marker, and it bounced off Lea’s forehead and rolled away. “Why are you just telling us this now?” she shrieked.

Lea rolled off the back of the couch and onto his feet. “What’s your problem?”

She threw he hands up in the air. “My problem, Lea, is that I am standing here trying to connect some very disparate groups of people, and you have been sitting on one of those connections!”

“Well how was I supposed to know? I met a kid one time ten years ago! You want a report of everyone I’ve ever talked to?”

“If their name is on this board, _yes_!”

Riku tensed up, ready to jump in between them, but Sora placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. “Just let them go,” he whispered.

“And how did you not realize Roxas looked like someone you’d met before?” Kairi continued. 

“It was _ten years ago!_ I don’t remember everyone I met ten years ago!”

“But you remembered his name!”

“Maybe Ventus is a common name where he’s from, who am I to judge?”

“Maybe Ventus is a common name?” Kairi’s voice was reaching a higher pitch than previously thought possible. “ _Ventus_? You meet a lot of Ventuses?”

“The plural is Venti,” Riku muttered into Sora’s ear. It earned him a giggle and a dirty look from Kairi.

“Listen, I don’t get what the big deal is,” said Lea, assuming his most casual slouch. “So what if they look alike?”

“So what? So what?” Kairi banged her fist on the whiteboard. “So Ventus is in Sora’s heart, that’s what!”

Sora and Mickey both gasped. Lea opened his mouth and stopped halfway to whatever he was going to say. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” Kairi stared at him. Slowly, Lea returned to his perch on the back of the couch.

“My bad.”

Kairi blew a stray piece of hair out of her hair and turned around to erase _Roxas 2?_ and replace it with _Ventus._ “So. We now know that Ventus looks like Roxas. And we know that there’s an extra Roxas in Sora’s heart. Ergo .”

“Mickey,” Riku said, leaning forward to look around Sora, “Why didn’t you mention this? You knew Ventus.”

Mickey looked a bit startled by the focus shifting to him. “Now that you mention it,” he said, looking down, “I don’t think I ever met Roxas.”

“How is that possible?” Sora asked. “Weren’t you with Riku?”

“We were doing different things most of the time,” Mickey said with a shrug. “I just don’t think I ever saw him.” He tilted his head. “Roxas didn’t look like Sora?”

“All the rest of us just looked like ourselves,” said Lea. “But Roxas was, like, blonde. Here.” He jumped down off the couch and retrieved the marker Kairi had aimed at him earlier. “I did wonder about it,” he said, crossing to the whiteboard, “but I figured it was just because he was unique, what with Sora still being alive and all. Sora kept all the dumb brown hair genes or whatever.”

“My hair’s not dumb,” Sora grumbled. “You guys are assholes.”

Donald smacked Sora on the back of the head. “Watch your language!”

Sora rubbed his head and sank deeper into the couch, pouting. Riku ruffled his dumb brown hair. 

Lea stepped back from the whiteboard. “Ta-da!”

They all looked.

He had drawn a shaky circle with a frowny face in it and a bunch of spikes swooping to one side.

Kairi took a moment to assess. “That’s Roxas.”

“Yeah!” He raised his hand under the drawing. “Roxas! Riku, back me up here. Looks just like him, right?”

Riku squinted. “It’s… not _not_ Roxas,” he said. “I’m just not sure it’ll be much help.”

“No, actually,” Mickey chimed in, peering at the board, “the hair… could be Ventus, maybe.”

Lea stood up very straight and smiled a very smug smile. “See?”

Kairi frowned up at him. “Well, I guess if they say so.”

“Wait, Kairi,” said Sora, leaning in, “have you not met Roxas either?”

“I - “ She frowned. “When I… There… when… oh my god.” She marched over to the whiteboard, grabbed a marker, and reached way up high above Aqua’s name.

_Priority 1: Headshots_

“We own cameras!” she shouted at no one. “This is ridiculous! Everyone is going to line up for a portrait before you leave this room.”

“Aw, and my hair’s a mess,” said Lea as he resumed lurking behind the couch, now accompanied by an irritating sense of self-satisfaction. “Give a guy some warning, huh? Gotta fix up my makeup.”

“Your eyeliner is so thick it looks like you put it on with a Sharpie,” Kairi said, taking a breath. “So. Okay. So”. She drew a little arrow from _Ventus_ to _Sora_ and labeled it with a heart.

“But… but how?” cried Sora. “Why?”

“If I had to guess,” said Kairi, “and I do have to guess because nobody knows anything apparently, Ventus is asleep because his heart is missing. Like I was. And, like my heart, it’s hiding inside Sora. Why is beyond me.”

Sora frowned down at his chest. Riku rested a hand on his forearm. “I was joking about stabbing yourself,” he said.

“Right. Yeah.” Sora looked unconvinced. “Bad idea.”

“So, to wake up Ventus, we need to figure out how to free his heart without killing Sora in the process.” Kairi examined her whiteboard. It was getting cluttered. “I’m starting to understand why we haven’t talked this out before.”

“It’s easy,” Sora said. “Just don’t think about it!”

Kairi pinches the bridge of her nose. “How did we even get this far?”

“Blind luck,” said Donald.

“Destiny!” said Sora.

“Lots of pain,” said Riku.

“I died,” said Lea.

Kairi slouched, took a deep breath, then straightened back up. “Let’s go back to the Seekers,” she said. “We’ll worry about whose heart is where later.”

“We know they’ve got Braig,” said Lea, “and Isa.”

“Xemnas, too,” Kairi responded, adding them to the list. “I mean, I think he’s a vessel for himself and I’m not sure how _that_ works but let’s roll with it.”

“Ienzo’s neutral. Aeleus and Dilan, too. Even disappeared, though. Could be a vessel. Could just be off doing something creepy.”

Those names went in between the two lists. “We should check in on them anyway.”

“Larxene and Marluxia,” Lea continued, “seem like they’d be big fans of the darkness. Demyx is a maybe. He seemed like a cool guy. I feel like given the chance he’d just leave.”

“That all tracks.” Kairi wrote Larxene and Marluxia under Darkness, and Demyx in between. She took a moment and counted. “We’re missing one.”

There was a conspicuous pause as Lea failed to supply a name.

“And their name would be…” Kairi prompted.

“Gimme a second,” said Lea, counting on fingers.

“You were teammates with these people for ten years and you can’t name all of them.”

“There were a lot of them!”

Sora looked up at the ceiling, remembering. “Uh, there was the guy with the eyepatch - “

“Braig.”

“There was the real big guy with dreadlocks.”

“That’s Dilan.”

“There was… something with cards?”

Lea snapped. “Luxord! We forgot Luxord. It’s Luxord.”

Kairi took a sarcastic pause before saying, “Good job,” and writing _Luxord_ in the neutral zone. “You are, as always, a huge help.”

Lea grinned and finger guns’d Kairi.

“That’s gotta be everybody,” Sora said, examining the board. “Right?”

“Does anyone have any additions?” Kairi asked, capping the marker. “Any other forgotten doubles or matryoshka hearts?”

Mickey spoke up. “The only other person I can think of would be Vanitas, but he was destroyed.”

“No one’s ever really destroyed in this stupid mess,” Kairi muttered, uncapping the marker again. “Who’s Vanitas.”

“A being created from the darkness in Ventus’s heart. But he was destroyed in the final battle between them.”

Kairi wrote _Vanitas?_ at the bottom of the board. “Did he happen to look like anyone else?”

“I couldn’t tell you. He always had a helmet on. I never saw him without it.”

“Of course.” She tapped on the Venn diagram. “So for all we know, he’s Kairi 2.”

Lea shook his head. “I never met a Vanitas, that’s for sure. I’d remember a name like that.”

Kairi wiped clean a portion of the board. “So the questions are,” she said, numbering them as she write them down, “one: how to rescue Aqua. Two: who are our seven. Three: who are their thirteen. Four: who’s Kairi 2.”

Sora raised his hand. “I’d also like to know why Ventus is in my heart.”

Kairi nodded. “Five: why is Ventus in Sergeant Sora’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

“Stop calling it that!”

“And, branching off that, six: how to get Roxas and Ventus out without killing Sora.” She finally set down the marker and stepped back from the board, inspecting her handiwork. It wasn’t exactly the cleanest chart, but everything seemed to be there.

Lea clapped. “You’ve done it. It’s all crystal clear. Can I go now?”

“Like you’ve got somewhere better to be.”

“Some of us are of legal drinking age, kid.”

Yen Sid’s voice rumbled from behind them. “I believe Lea has additional training with the Keyblade to attend to. Is that correct, Lea?”

Lea groaned. “Yeah, yeah.” He shook his head. “I get one day off and I spend it listening to a lecture. Great.”

Kairi stuck her tongue out at him. He returned the gesture.

“Kairi,” Yen Sid continued, “do you not also have training to do? And you, Sora? Or do you think you’re ready?”

“No sir!” Sora said, jumping out of his seat. “I mean, yes, I have training to do!” He grinned at Kairi. “I’ll see you later. This was helpful, really!” He ran to the door, yanked it open, and was disappearing on the other side before Donald and Goofy could get up to chase after him. Lea took the opportunity to slip out as well.

Kairi stood next to Yen Sid’s desk. “Why can’t anything be easy?” she moaned.

Riku offered her a sheepish smile as he rose from the couch. “You know Sora’s never been big on plans. Or thinking. It’s part of his charm, theoretically.”

“Your efforts to clarify matters are appreciated,” Yen Sid said, making notes on parchment. “And I think some helpful insights were gained. Our path seems to be clearer.”

Kairi shook her head. “It baffles me that none of you had this conversation earlier. How hard is it to get everyone in a room together for five minutes?”

“About as hard,” said Yen Sid, “as it is to remember to take their pictures before they leave.”

Kairi’s eyes grew wide. “The pictures!” She ran to the door, threw it open, and ran after them howling. “GET BACK HERE!”


End file.
